Red House Farm – a busy and popular tourism destination situated in Dunham Massey, It’s a family run affair with differing elements to the business. Nice café, farm shop, holiday activities and birthday parties for children. The business runs 7 days a week and while there are peaks and troughs to the business, it is when the business is at it’s busiest that there is the need for consistent messages on various social media platforms.
One of the highlights of the year is the popular Maize Maze in Summer. Over the past few years we’ve had themes of Blue Peter, Alice In Wonderland, The One Show, Queens Diamond Jubilee, Cowboy Theme and the Commonwealth Games made out of over 500,000 maize plants. It’s something that people travel for as well as our local fans that come every single year
It’s Summer and school holidays where the Social Media activity is frenzied
Jonny Hewitt, Director of Fun & Chaos explains…..
“I love social media and have been active in promoting the farm through Facebook pages and twitter which is fine in the quiet time, however when it is when it start to get busier that it becomes far more difficult to maintain and also keep abreast of what’s new and how to keep engaging with our client base. Coupled with feeling I was constantly glued to my phone at night and when on holiday told me ‘something had to change’. It’s something I’ve spoken to with other local business owners – there is a feeling with social media you can never switch off”
I have known Alex at Altrincham HQ for some time and had some 1-2-1 training with him as well 18 months previously. We met in Altrincham for a frank chat about the business at Red House farm and what I wanted to achieve from using Alex in managing our social media presence. Alex came up with a number of different ideas and set to work straight away in the early summer 2015. The results were fairly immediate. Better engagement from customers in both twitter and facebook, more messages about what we are doing, more pictures being posted by customers, more postings on Tripadvisor. And actual online sales as we used an online ticket system for the 1st time this year at the farm to make it easier for people to plan the holidays in advance
In the summer we had our busiest summer for a number of years (despite the weather being indifferent) while knowingly reducing our spend in traditional advertising in papers and magazines. We cut our ad spend by 80%. We didn’t use paid facebook advertising in 2015 as the organic growth in a few months saw our page grow by an extra 1000 people in a few short months, but will be looking to Facebook adverts in 2016 to increase reach even further.
We have an average of 15,000 visitors over the Summer (and this rose this year) – but we can’t be complacent with our marketing and think everybody knows about the farm. The reality is there are new parents that might not know we exist and Social Media plays a massive part in letting them know that we exist and showing the fun time that families have every day
While I pride myself on being good at marketing, I also have to know when to let some jobs be done by better people, using Altrincham HQ has had a very positive effect on our business. I am looking forward to continuing the relationship and have no hesitation in recommending Alex to other businesses.
For more info on Red House Farm check out http://redhousefarm.co.uk/
WANT TO CHAT ABOUT MARKETING THAT WORKS?
If you want to chat to us about an effective marketing plan for your business
Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk
